Meeting set for county comprehensive plan

Area residents are encouraged to attend an informational meeting about revisions planned for the Leavenworth County Comprehensive Plan.

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. next Wednesday at the Tonganoxie High School auditorium.

John Zoellner, county planning director, said issues will deal primarily with land use, transportation and wastewater management.

Zoellner said that ideally, this plan would work with Tonganoxie's proposed comprehensive plan, which is geared to lead the city through the year 2020.

"We'd like for it to tie in," Zoellner said. "So that their plan would fit into our plan like a piece in a puzzle."

The county's plan addresses transportation needs.

One issue that needs to be addressed, Zoellner said, is the western area of the county.

"Right now we don't have good hard-surfaced streets running north and south in the western part of the county, near Tonganoxie," Zoellner said.

This is an area where public input is needed.

"We'll be talking about how to possibly fund those," Zoellner said. "What needs to be done costs a great deal of money. We have a smaller alternative we're looking at that would be a 3-mill increase for everyone in the county. The other alternative would probably be three times as expensive, if not more."

In analyzing the county's needs for wastewater treatment, Zoellner said the plan looks into the future in terms of providing sewer treatment plants for the Stranger Creek areas.

The county's comprehensive plan was written in 1987, and Zoellner said this will be an update of that.